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All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 6/30/2017 Trump & The Russians; 'This Is The President'

Guests: Ted Lieu, Michelle Goldberg

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: June 30, 2017 Guest: Ted Lieu, Michelle Goldberg

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Russia, if you`re listening, I hope you`re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.

HAYES: The question of collusion. New theories about Michael Flynn`s role and links to Russian hackers.

TRUMP: If Russia or China or any other country has those e-mails, I mean, to be honest with you, I`d love to see them.

HAYES: Then, states fight backs as the administration asks for voter information.

KRIS KOBACH, KANSAS SECRETARY OF STATE: Let`s find out how significant those errors are, let`s find out how many deceased people are on the roll.

HAYES: Plus, the White House now accused of trying to coerce and intimidate two cable news hosts.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: They said, if you call the President up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike this story.

HAYES: And the health care bill in serious trouble, as the White House Suggests repeal, not replace.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: The President hasn`t changed his thinking at all but we`re, you know, looking at every possible option.

HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Good evening from New York, I`m Chris Hayes. In one week, President Trump will meet for the first time in person, with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two leaders speak on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. That meeting has a lot of people worried. Democratic Senator Jack Reed said today that "President Trump`s eagerness to meet with Vladimir Putin under current circumstances seems ill-advised" and western officials fear that a president who in May apparently blithely disclosed some of the U.S.`s most sensitive intelligence secrets to Russian officials could do even more damage.

Moscow reportedly believes Putin can extract major concessions from Trump at the meeting. One Observer noting that "Putin is very good at these first meetings. He has an agenda and he knows how to maneuver people. If Trump isn`t prepared, the longer he stays in the room, the more dangerous it is." Looming over the entire meeting of course will be Russia`s interference in the U.S. election. Something President Trump refuses to fully acknowledge despite the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies. At the White House yesterday, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to say whether the President will even bring the issue up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s clearly the biggest topic between the U.S. and Russia right now. The fact that Moscow meddled in the election, is the President going to press Putin on that?

SANDERS: Obviously I`m not going to get ahead of the President`s conversation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The question at the center of the Russia investigation is whether President Trump or members of his campaign colluded with the Russians in their successful campaign to influence the U.S. election. The President has repeatedly denied any collusion on his part specifically. But yesterday, we got a crucial new piece of information that suggests a plausible theory of how any collusion could take in place. And it makes clear what the most pressing questions are for reporters and investigators. Vladimir Putin`s animus towards Hillary Clinton is well known and well documented. He blames her among other things for the 2011 outbreak of protests in Moscow where Putin was accused of rigging elections.

And when Clinton ran for President, Putin`s government successfully hacked into the DNC`s e-mail server and released damaging information. But Clinton, as we all know, was still widely expected to win the Presidency. And that`s where President Trump comes in. He seems to have believed that a different set of e-mails, the one that Hillary Clinton had deleted from her personal server saying they were not work related, had the potential to destroy her candidacy and put him in the White House. And last July, he directly asked the Russians to find the e-mails and release them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Russia, if you`re listening, I hope you`re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Later he dismissed Katy Tur`s question about whether his request for a hostile foreign government to hack into a former Secretary of State e-mail was inappropriate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, it gives me no pause, if they have them, they have them. Hey, you know what gives me more pause, that a person in our government, crooked Hillary Clinton -- here`s what gives me pause, be quiet, I know you want to you know, save her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: So, we know that President Trump wanted Clinton`s e-mails, the ones that had been deleted from the server after being classified as not work related. And we know that his close Adviser Michael Flynn who he had later name National Security Adviser had contacts in the Russian government and intelligence apparatus, including famously having attended a dinner with Vladimir Putin. But perhaps more interestingly, Flynn even boasted that he was, and I quote here, "the first U.S. officer ever allowed inside the headquarters of the GRU, the Russian Intelligence Agency." So Trump badly wanted Clinton`s e-mails, he believed the Russia had them or had access to them and he knew that Michael Flynn had connections to Russia. So a question, did the President ever ask Michael Flynn to help him acquire hacked Hillary Clinton e-mails from the Russians?

Keep in mind that yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that before the election, Republican operative Peter Smith embarked on a kind of freelance campaign apparently to get Clinton`s missing e-mails from the Russians, and that while doing so, intimated he was working with none other than Flynn. Journal also reported the bombshell news that quoting again, "investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain e-mails from Mrs. Clinton`s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary.

This of course, does not prove that Michael Flynn was involved but we know quite certainly that President Trump has gone to tremendous, even reckless lengths to protect Michael Flynn. The President chose not to fire Flynn as National Security Adviser despite repeated warnings from the Acting Attorney General that Flynn had been lying about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador and was exposed to possible criminal liability for it, and was susceptible to Russian blackmail. He only fired Flynn after those lies were leaked to the press. The President then, after he fired him, asked FBI Director James Comey to back off Flynn and the Russian investigation, asked other officials to lean on Comey to do so. He then fired Comey when he did not comply. The President has also repeatedly defended Flynn, despite firing him for lying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Michael Flynn, General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he`s been treated very unfairly by the media. As I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it`s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Flynn himself has gone silent publicly but in March, he said he was willing to be interviewed about the Trump campaign`s possible ties to Russia in exchange for immunity. His lawyer stating, "General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it." Joining me now, my friend, Rachel Maddow, host of Rachel Maddow show who`s been covering as well or better than anyone.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: I don`t know. That was really good. That was really -- that was really well sold.

HAYES: I just -- I`m curious why you made the story because I feel like this story in terms of its -- the waves it sent have not been as large as others but for me personally, the way that I feel like I`m putting the facts as we know them entered in evidence into view, seems like one of the most significant because it puts Flynn at the center of something, and it gives some plausible vision of what exactly someone might be up to in reaching out to the Russians.

MADDOW: Yes, and I think you -- I think you laid it out perfectly. And you know, the -- we`ve now been looking at this long enough as a country. And we know enough about the investigation into it, that some parts of it are clear and well established. Nobody credible can deny that Russia attacked our election process, that they stole e-mails from the DNC, they stole e-mails from the Clinton campaign. They turned them around through - - basically a weaponized leak system, as -- which they ran alongside a propaganda campaign to try to drive the election in Donald Trump`s favor. We are all supposed to agree with that now because that`s been never credibly rebutted. The intelligence agencies say with high degree of certainty that`s what happened. OK, beyond that, we don`t know that much.

HAYES: Right.

MADDOW: And what the Wall Street Journal and Shane Harris broke yesterday are actually two very important stories. And one of them, you just read a piece of there, and that`s brand new and a huge deal.

HAYES: And in some ways, buried the lead because it`s a few paragraphs down.

MADDOW: Because it`s a few paragraphs in. After you, that like the source is dead ted days after the interview, and all the stuff they`re -- all of the stuff they`re very intriguing stuff here. In -- according to Wall Street Journal, investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that described Russian hackers discussing how to obtain Clinton`s e-mails from her server and then transmit them to Flynn via an intermediary. That is the first time we`ve had any reporting like that.

HAYES: That`s right.

MADDOW: That says that investigators are looking not just at the contacts between Russians or even Russian officials in the Trump campaign, this is contacts for the purpose of helping them in the campaign.

HAYES: And what strike -- I agree completely and what`s so significant about that is because it`s been very hard to separate out the wheat from the chaff of contacts because there are contacts that could be entirely innocent.

MADDOW: Sure.

HAYES: And contact -- I mean, the people have contact, right? And there are some contacts that look strange. But the other thing about this, that I thought about, I thought back to just what campaigns will do for oppo and the lengths they`ll go to. And the idea that there was a bombshell hiding -- that`s represented in the story, that Smith thought, OK, this is -- this is the silver bullet to defeat Hillary Clinton, those e-mails. And remember, the President of the United States talked about them all the time. The idea was hiding in the 33,000 e-mails were clear evidence of wrong doing, clear evidence of things she deleted to cover up. Remember they talked about how she bleached her server. So all of a sudden it was like, oh interesting. At least for Smith, there`s a motive to collude which is to get these e-mails.

MADDOW: Right. And he`s open about that.

HAYES: (INAUDIBLE)

MADDOW: We don`t have to infer that, he says it on the record; he puts his name on it. He`s rather proud of it. He even says to the Wall Street Journal that we knew the people who had these, were probably around the Russian government. There`s no pleading ignorance here. They know they`re going to the Russian government, which is attacking our election and trying to get in on that sweet, sweet stuff that can be used against Hillary Clinton. That happened. That`s confessed to.

HAYES: And then the -- and the other part of this is that there`s one other person who`s on the record saying it by name who believes that, which is the President of the United States. Because he looked into the camera, and I`ve been saying for -- I`ve been talking to people about this story, they come up here on the street and want to talk about the story and I say look, my operating assumption here is, there`s no need for any secret back dealing. The President of the United States looked into the camera and said Russia, if you`re listening, please hack Hillary Clinton.

MADDOW: Right.

HAYES: So, no one`s going to do some secret drops in the dead of night. He just said it into a camera.

MADDOW: But saying -- but it is one thing to say it`s sort of aspirationally and he says it was -- a joke, and I meant it in sort of a sarcastic way. Well, OK, if that was --

HAYES: Although it`s clear when he talked -- when he responds to Katy Tur that he doesn`t. I just want to be clear. In that moment --

MADDOW: And he has a weird sense of humor and it`s hard to tell. And taking his words either at face value or for what they seem to imply is a fool`s errand and it has been ever since he`s been a public figure, even before he was a political public figure. That even that was -- even if you take that as the most innocent thing possible, it was aspirational. What we have here is evidence that there were American confederates in the Russian plan. There were Americans who tried to get in on what the Russians were doing.

HAYES: Who thought this is such thing.

MADDOW: And now the question is whether or not that was at the behest of or in conjunction with the Trump campaign. That`s where the connections between this guy, Peter Smith, who`s died now, Peter Smith and Flynn, what he described as his own connection with Flynn become very important. And it`s where it becomes very important as to how much really the way the Justice Department is going to approach Flynn, because --

HAYES: That`s exactly right.

MADDOW: The choice Flynn`s going to have to make, if he is -- if what`s implied in this article is true about him, is how much he wants to talk about what he did and how much he wants to take it on himself, and how much he wants to talk about the campaign.

HAYES: It also does one other thing that for me has been clarifying, which is, the connection between the cue tracks of this which is whatever happened on the first order, and the obstruction of justice. Everything that happened in attempting -- in firing the FBI Director, in obfuscating and dissembling about why they did so. That -- at the center of that, is the one request that we know the President made at least according to James Comey under oath, which is to lay off Flynn. That Flynn has always been the person that Sally Yates gets very concerned and goes over there twice, that they still don`t fire him. They fire him and then they immediately start protecting him, defending him in public. That he asked James Comey not to go after them and then he calls his -- that the through line here between the two parts of this story, which is whatever happens with the Russians and whatever they were doing about trying to stop James Comey for what he was doing is that Michael Flynn is the nexus of both of those.

MADDOW: Yes. And we believe although it`s a little unclear in terms of Dan Coats and Mike Rogers. We believe that some of the requests that the President made to them may also have been specific to the Flynn case rather than being in general about Russia. That`s a little -- we have much less information about that because we don`t have as much public testimony and description about it as we do from Comey. But it does seem like -- there`s a lot that doesn`t make sense about Flynn in the first place.

Why did they hire him, why did they held onto him for so long after they got what really a very unusual hair on fire warnings about him from the Justice Department? Why did they let him stay on at the White House for18 days thereafter, and then they didn`t fire him. They accepted his resignation. They never clarified on the record any of the false statements that he made, or that other administration officials made on his behalf. The president has been defending him. The President we know, leaned on it at least one person to try to stop that investigation and the silence of Michael Flynn throughout this entire period. He has not spoken publicly since he left the White House, is starting to feel like the real center of the bull`s eye.

HAYES: I could not agree more. I actually feel like this story was one of the first times because often I find that with each new development, I feel more confuses or more pulled in different directions. And this story was the first story that I read in a long time that felt like I could see a line, sort of emerge. Like, they wanted Smith at least -- I`m not just talking about Smith in reporting, not anyone else. They wanted the hack e- mails.

MADDOW: Yes.

HAYES: They thought that was the game, that`s the silver bullet. Hillary Clinton`s hacked e-mails are going to be the thing that brings down Hillary Clinton.

MADDOW: Well, the -- and think about the time line here. This is -- he`s supposedly convening this group of experts and a Russian language speaking security -- I mean, all the investigator and all these people on Labor Day. By that point, if you are -- you know, not at all suspicious or bothered by Russia attacking our election, at that point, there`s a lot of wow factor in terms of what we know about what the Russians have done, right?

HAYES: That`s right. That`s true.

MADDOW: They got into the Democratic National Committee`s materials and released them in such a way that during the democratic convention, the Chair of the Democratic Party had to resign. And they`ve got -- the way they`ve already rolled stuff out, the stuff they`ve already got access to, by that point, by Labor Day, we can, the Washington Post has already reporting that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement is on to a massive Russian attack on our election. There`s a lot to be impressed by if you`re not patriotic on this, and you want to use it for our own purposes.

HAYES: All right, Rachel Maddow will be back in less than an hour.

MADDOW: Thank you, Chris.

HAYES: Have a great holiday weekend.

Joining me now, Democratic Representative Ted Lieu of California, Congressman, your reaction to the Wall Street Journal story?

REP. TED LIEU (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, first of all, thank you, Chris, for highlighting this story because this is a bombshell article. If the allegations are true, we have very strong evidence of collusion. You`ve got Russian hackers specifically discussing how to steal information from Hillary Clinton`s server and transfer them to Michael Flynn who is then a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. That`s about as direct line of collusion as you can have.

HAYES: Do you -- are you confident that ultimately we will get to the bottom of things around Michael Flynn, who has thus far invoked his Fifth Amendment constitutional right when confronted by the Congressional subpoena. Has said he`s shopping for immunity and has not spoken publicly.

LIEU: I am confident because our Special Counsel, Robert Mueller is not messing around. Just look at the people he`s hired, the top criminal law expert from the Department of Justice, the top person involved with foreign corruption and bribery and he`s going to hire additional 13 prosecutors. So I believe the Special Council will get to the bottom of Michael Flynn. And keep in mind, there`s been other press reports saying that Michael Flynn when discussing information with a female in Russia, he signed his e- mails as General Misha. I mean, what American military officer would ever do that.

HAYES: Well, I mean, charitably, he could be trying to sort of, you know, ingratiate himself or sort of tongue in cheek. I mean, he seemed to think in his -- in reporting about him, that he had a non-sinister and genuine good relationship with his Russian counterparts.

LIEU: That could be true, but if he then corroborated with them, in the Trump campaign, that is collusion. And I want to put to bed right now in some of these crazy notions that I`ve seen on Fox News, not that I want to imply watching it all that much. These men, these crazy notions --

HAYES: You sound like the President now.

LIEU: These crazy notions that somehow if there was collusion, it`s not a crime. That`s just flat out wrong. Not only is it treason, but the Federal Election Campaign Act specifically says, you cannot as a campaign, accept foreign contributions. And it defines contributions not just as money but anything of value. Those are known as in-kind contributions. So if the Trump campaign colluded, then they would be the beneficiary of the largest illegal foreign in-kind contribution in the history of the United States.

Yes, we should note, we played on this show several people over at Fox and the timing is interesting, I should note that they were saying this about a week before this story was published in the Wall Street Journal which of course is also owned by Rupert Murdoch like Fox, basically making the argument in advance of a possible finding that there`s collusion, that we`re that to be found, it would still not constitute a crime. You`re someone who was a former Prosecutor, you`re saying that it would.

LIEU: Yes, it`s a flat out violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. It`s a very direct prohibition. There really is no way around that.

HAYES: Do you think that -- is your expectation that should further evidence of that come out, that the defense will simply move in that direction that even if they did it, that it`s OK. I don`t think that will be the defense because keep in mind, that`s not the White House defense. It`s not what Trump is saying. What the White House is saying this never happened or if it happened, the President knew nothing about it. And we`ll only know if Michael Flynn reveals what he reveals to the Special Counsel.

HAYES: Well, that latter point I think is key because the last time he was pressed on this, he said, the President, I think I`m quoting verbatim, I can only speak for myself when talking about this, which I thought was an interesting distinction made by the President. Representative Ted Lieu, thank you for your time tonight. Happy fourth.

HAYES: Ahead, allegations that the Trump administration threatened hosts on this network with a National Enquirer hit piece in an attempt to force an apology on their coverage, that after this two-minute break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: In the wake of the President`s crass tweet about them yesterday, two hosts on this network, Mika Brzezinski, and Joe Scarborough said the White House once tried to use the threat of a salacious tabloid story about them to extract an apology to the President of the United States for their coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH: We got a call that hey, the National Enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys. And it was -- you know, Donald is friends with -- the President is friends with the guy that runs the National Enquirer. And they said, if you call the President up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: And let me explain what they were threatening. They were calling my children; they were calling close friends --

SCARBOROUGH: You`re talking about the National Enquirer?

BRZEZINSKI: And they were pinning the story on my ex-husband who would absolutely never do that. And then Joe had the conversations that he had with the White House, where they said, oh, this could go away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The President later seemed to confirm aspects of that account in a statement on Twitter, "watched low rated Morning Joe for the first time in a long time. Fake new. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article, I said no, bad show." That`s a lie according to Scarborough who said, he has phone records and texts from the White House official to back up his story. In a statement, the National Enquirer stood by its reporting adding, "At no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story. We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions."

According to reporting by the Daily Beast and New York Magazine citing multiple anonymous sources, the White House official who communicated with Scarborough was none other than the President`s son-in-law and Senior Adviser Jared Kushner. I`m joined now by Michelle Goldberg, Columnist for Slate. I should say off the bed here for anyone watching, I don`t know anything other than what has been reported publicly. I have no special access into this and basically take at their word, my colleagues. We should also say that MSNBC has said they`re not going to release the threats, those texts. Although my first thought was, having nothing to do with this if anyone in that White House is putting something like this in writing, what else are they putting in writing?

MICHELLE GOLDBERG, SLATE COLUMNIST: Right, or what else are they saying -- are they saying on the phone when there`s not going to be a written record. I mean, the thing about this story is that, on the one hand, it`s so sordid and farcical and it can be easy to sort of laugh and sneer at. On the other hand, it`s deadly serious, if you basically have people in the White House blackmailing members of the press into better coverage by threatening the publish our sexual secrets which is essentially what`s being alleged here.

HAYES: And we should be clear that the President is we know friendly with the National Enquirer.

GOLDBERG: More than friendly, right? I mean, the National Enquirer is like slavishly devoted to the President. You know, Jeff Toobin has a great piece in the New Yorker, either last week or the week before that, about their relationship. And one of the thing -- one of the interesting revelations in that piece is that during the campaign, there was a former playboy playmate who was shopping around the story of her affair with Trump while he was married to Melania and the National Enquirer paid her $150,000.00, not for her story, but to quash the story. They paid -- they hired her ostensibly as a Fitness Columnist or something like that, on the condition that she not say anything negative about Donald Trump.

HAYES: So right, so we know the National Inquirer has been allied with the President. But there`s also just the -- I mean, we were always using this sort of term Nixonian or whatever but in terms of just a raw abuse of power. The idea that you would communicate to people in the media that we can pull some strings for you if you apologize for your coverage is really a very serious abuse of power.

GOLDBERG: Yes, I mean it`s an -- you know, I mean, it`s not an exact analog to what Nixon did, but Nixon, you know, they did try to smear people in the press. You know, they planted stories in life magazine, tapped the phones of journalists, there was you know, a kind of similar effort to undermine people`s reputation and spy on them and destroy people that they considered to be their enemies.

HAYES: And there was the same issue here which I think is the through line here is the obsession with the press. Obsession, I mean, this is what we know from the tapes, it`s what we know from all the accounts of Nixon was almost in the kind of like clinically compulsive way, incapable of just putting at arm`s length the press treatment of him. And it has just manifestly evident in this President that he cannot help himself, that the one thing he cares about more than anything, people have documented his tweets. You know, the massive (INAUDIBLE) about the press are not about like affairs of state or matters of substance or the health care bill.

GOLDBERG: Right. Anyway, as this kind of tragic relationship with the press that he just wants their love and approbation and yet he can`t help himself but act in ways that invite scorn and ridicule. And you know, in some ways, he has it worse than Nixon because the press-because there`s just so much more of the press that`s on all the time, it`s harder for him to escape. I mean, you can kind of you know, see him watching --

HAYES: In real time. You can watch him -- watch him --

GOLDBERG: Right. He`s trying to tear himself away, he can`t tear himself away, he`s like enraged, he can`t control himself.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLDBERG: But it`s -- you know, but the thing is, because all of this, again, because all of this is such a sick joke and because it`s so bizarre, I feel like the -- like use of the abuse of power, the real seriousness, the seriousness of saying that you will destroy people with their sexual secrets unless they get in line is a terrifying thing for an administration.

HAYES: And authoritarian.

GOLDBERG: Right.

HAYES: And I should say finally, prompts the question of who else got calls like this, about whatever else. In fact, that to me is where I would like to see some answers.

GOLDBERG: Yes, and I really hope that there`s some investigations on both state and federally.

HAYES: I agree. All right, thank you, Michelle Goldberg.

GOLDBERG: Thanks so much.

HAYES: Based on President Trump`s unfounded claims of massive voter fraud, his Election Commission demands voter data and is facing massive push back, and new worries about voter suppression, that`s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Voter I.D., what`s with that? What`s with voter I.D.? Why aren`t we having voter I.D.? In other words, I want to vote, here`s my identification, I want to vote, as opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary. You won`t vote 15 times. But people will, they`ll vote many times, and how that could have happened is unbelievable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about mass voter fraud, despite mountains of evidence showing it does not happen. He even signed an executive order last month that establishing a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Yesterday, the Commission made its move asking for all states to provide a list of sweeping voter data including everything from names, addresses, dates of birth and political parties to the last four digits of Social Security numbers to information regarding any felony convictions.

So far, more than 20 states, Republican and Democrat have either partially or completely rejected that request, citing a duty to protect sensitive information. In Indiana, where Mike Pence was a Governor, the Secretary of State was a member of the President`s Commission said in a statement that "Indiana law doesn`t permit the Secretary of State to provide the personal information requested by Secretary Kobach." In Mississippi, the Secretary of State said, his office has not yet received a request, but in the event they do, his reply would be, "they can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico."

And Kansas, whose secretary of state is leading this commission, Chris Kobach, said it won`t be sharing the Social Security information with the commission.

While Connecticut secretary of state specifically cited Kobach`s history of her refusal to comply, pointing out his, quote, lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.

Just yesterday, the president added someone else to his election integrity commission who also has a history of making false, unsupported claims of voter fraud. And we`ll tell you who that is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANS VON SPAKOVSKY, PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON ELECTION INTEGRITY: We have an honor system in the United States when it comes to voter registration and voting. States do almost nothing to verify the accuracy of the information they get when you register to vote. They don`t check to make sure you`re a real person. They don`t check your ID, they don`t check to see if you`re a U.S. citizen, they simply take the information they get on voter registration forms, put it into the system and you are promptly registered to vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Meet the newest member of President Trump`s commission on election integrity, Hans Von Spakovsky, a man that Congressman John Lewis described in 2012 as the moving force behind photo IDs. He`s the one who`s gotten the Republican legislature, the Republican Party, to go along with this, even though there is no voter fraud to speak of.

And a man who just days before the 2008 election wrote an op-ed piece on the Fox News website claiming, and I quote, "one doesn`t have to look far to find instances of fraudulent ballots cast in actual elections by voters who are the figments of active imaginations."

Now his viewpoint twins up nicely with the man leading the election commission`s investigation, that would be Chris Kobach, who is profiled in a great piece in the New York Times magazine, called "The man behind Trump`s voter fraud obsession," very well timed piece.

And joining me now, Ari Berman, who wrote that profile of Chris Kobach, a senior contributing writer at The Nation and author of "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America."

First -- so, I want to talk about let`s start with what they`re doing. Why are red and blue secretaries of state flipping out, and almost, but just stopping short of giving the finger to Chris Kobach`s request?

ARI BERMAN, JOURNALIST: Well, this is pretty amazing. So, Chris Kobach asked every state to provide lots of data on voters. He said he wanted publicly available data, but he asked for lots of stuff that wasn`t publicly available.

HAYES: Publicly available data, you can buy a voter file.

BERMAN: Of course.

HAYES: You don`t need to--

BERMAN: But he was asking for things like criminal history. He was asking like lots of different things.

HAYES: Social Security numbers--

BERMAN: Social Security numbers, for privacy issues that aren`t publicly available and that states don`t want to give out.

So, I think people thought, you know, it`s Chris Kobach. It`s the Trump election commission. Everyone is just going to give these documents over, at least the Republican states are going to give these documents over.

But what happened is, you had so many Republican states today come out and say they`re not going to give this out. My favorite is the Indiana secretary of state, who is on Kobach`s commission said she`s not going to give him the data.

HAYES: Chris Kobach also told Chris Kobach in his role as secretary of state, he told Chris Kobach as his role of head of the commission he`s not going to turn over the Social Security numbers.

So, here`s the question give us what the histories of Kobach are and Von Spokovsky, and what we should conclude about what they`re up to based on those histories?

BERMAN: Well, they`re really the two leading advocates for voter suppression inside the Republican Party. Hans Von Spokovsky has been making the case for things like strict voter ID laws for decades. He was the moving force in the Bush Justice Department when it came to undermining voting rights. He is almost single-handedly responsible for spreading the myth of voter fraud.

And then Chris Kobach picked up right where Hans Von Spokovsky left off. And he`s kind of the architect of modern day voter suppression measures. He`s both made wildly misleading claims about voter fraud. He`s one of the only people that defend Trump`s claims that millions of people voted illegally. But he`s also put into place very suppressive policies, like in Kansas you have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.

So, you have to show your passport, your birth certificate, or naturalization papers to register to vote, which most people don`t have on them when they go to register.

So, one in seven new voters in Kansas have been blocked from registering when this law went into affect in 2013. That`s an enormous number of people.

HAYES: One in seven people that tried to register were blocked because it means -- I don`t -- I have no idea where my birth certificate is. Tons of people don`t have passports. Like, that`s not an easy -- necessarily an easy request to fulfill when you go to sign up.

BERMAN: Absolutely. So, it was a very suppressive policy. He wants proof of citizenship laws to be in every state and at the federal level. That would disenfranchise millions of people.

And he claims this is necessary, because noncitizen voting is so rampant, but he has prosecutorial power in Kansas. He`s only convicted one noncitizen of voting.

HAYES: One person?

BERMAN: One person.

HAYES: Quickly, what are they up to? What is your fear for what they are doing?

BERMAN: They are going to spread lies about voter fraud in order to build public support for policies that suppress the vote. This whole commission was predicated on a giant lie, that Trump said millions of people voted illegally.

HAYES: Not just a lie, a preposterous, obvious lie that everyone knew was a lie as they watched it unfold.

BERMAN: But the real agenda is to try to get strict voter ID laws, to try to get proof of citizenship laws, to purge the voting roles, to cut early voting. And not just do it at the state level, like we`ve seen in North Carolina and Wisconsin and Texas, but to do it at the federal level as well.

And that`s why Kobach wants all this data for voters, because then he`s going to try to build support saying, oh, there`s all this fraud.

HAYES: To massage the data to produce evidence of fraud that he could then use a predicate to move some kinds of legislation federally.

BERMAN: Right before the 2018 and the 2020 elections.

HAYES: Right, we`re going to stay on this -- you`re going to stay on this. Ari Berman, thank you.

Still to come, was the president`s stance on repeal and replace swayed by a guest on a cable news show? Why it may be back to square one on that Senate bill ahead.

Plus, once the most hated man in America, an update on Farmer Bro in tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two next.

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HAYES: Thing One tonight, Farmer Bro, AKA Martin Shkreli, AKA The Young Exec who earned the title of most hated man in America two years ago when he bought the drug daraprim, which is critical for HIV treatments and immediately raised the price by 5,000 percent.

But Shkreli seemed to revel in the negative attention, amplifying it with tweets like, "50 to 100 date solicitations a day from me, the world`s most eligible bachelor. Sorry, but you have to be a shareholder to meet me."

So, when Shkreli was arrested in late 2015, accused of defrauding investors, he did not garner a ton of public sympathy. And that was on full display this week when the New York judge struggled to find unbiased jurors. More than 200 potential jurors were dismissed, some saying things like, "I don`t really like this person, or just looking at him kind of twists my stomach, to be honest," or, "the only thing I`d be impartial about is which prison he goes to."

But low public opinion isn`t Shkreli`s only problem. Like President Trump, he has a habit of frustrating his lawyers by publicly talking about his own case, which lead to a situation today that the perhaps the president`s lawyers could learn a thing or two from.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really think Martin is not going to be speaking to you guys again if he listens to me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He just spoke to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.

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HAYES: Martin "Farmer Bro" Shkreli can`t keep his mouth shut.

Last year, after a hearing in his criminal fraud lawsuit he bragged in a Periscope video, "it went great, the judge slapped the government again."

But it it hasn`t stopped. Today at the courthouse, Shkreli walked into the overflow room and surprised journalists by talking to them at length unprompted. He called the prosecutor`s office the junior varsity, teed off on a young woman who testified saying she wasn`t a victim. His lawyer offered some advice publicly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you mean what you said about the attorneys being junior varsity?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really think Martin is not going to be speaking to you guys again if he listens to me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He just spoke to us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Martin, how do you feel about insulting the prosecutors?

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don`t think anything Martin says by now is going to affect the case one way or the other, but I would very much appreciate it if he did not talk to the press, because sometimes he doesn`t have good--

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You`re getting good advice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you concerned about his Twitter, his tweeting?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. I`m not concerned -- I`m only concerned.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Martin, is that you, BLMBro, is that you on Twitter?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Republicans have planned to ram a health care bill through the Senate this week ahead of the July 4th holiday, but that didn`t work out. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put off a vote on the Senate bill after both moderates and conservatives in his party balked.

Now, some Republicans are going even further, suggesting that maybe they should only repeal Obamacare for now and figure out a replacement later.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska using a sure fire way to communicate this idea to President Trump, go on Fox and Friends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BEN SASSE, (R) NEBRASKA: To date, we`ve been trying to do those two things at once and not making enough process. I still hope that process could work. But most people are leaving D.C. today to go home for the Fourth of July weekend. And so if we don`t get this resolved by the Monday of the next week, July 10th, if there isn`t a combined repeal and replace plan, I`m writing a letter to the president this morning urging him to call on us to separate them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Now, he probably didn`t need the letter, because the president was clearly listening and watching, tweeting just minutes later, quote, "if Republican senators are unable to pass what they`re working on now, they should immediately repeal then replace at a later date."

Sasse himself immediate retweeted the president and repeated him message, writing, quote, "sounds great, prez @RealDonaldTrump. We are agreed, we need to break the logjam."

So, what happens now for Republicans as they head home to constituents? Well, Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana today got a taste of what`s in store.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I want to know if you`re going to vote for this health care that Trump has right now? And what can you do to stop the foolishness?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The fight to stop Senate Republicans from ever passing their health care bill starts this weekend, next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`ll tell you what`s rude, kicking 22 million people off their health care in this country who you know you cannot afford it. You worked at Earl K. Long Hospital for a long time. You know what people are like at their lowest. So to step on their necks by kicking them off their health care at this point, that`s cruel, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana at a town hall today on the receiving end of his constituents` anger over health care.

But while Republicans` plans to repeal and replace Obamacare saw major setbacks this week, the fight is not over at all. Instead, it now moves to Republicans` home states and districts over the July recess, with Senate Republicans in particular, as The Washington Post noted, quote, "increasingly anxious about heading home without a health plan."

The Daily Beast reporting activists are gearing up to find lawmakers and, quote, "attempt to get face-time with them along July 4th parade routes and other public appearances in their home states.

As a reminder, members of the House had their own round of contentious town halls earlier this year with voters angry and scared with the possibility of losing their coverage.

Joining me now Angel Padilla who is the co-founder and policy director of Indivisible, and former Republican Congressman David Jolly.

And David, let me start with you. This was -- this was going to be the week. I mean, I sat in our editorial meeting on Monday morning and it was this incredibly high leverage shoot the moon strategy of Mitch McConnell. Keep it secret, keep it secret, keep it secret. Put it into the daylight for only six or seven days, see if it can survive. Why did it not work?

DAVID JOLLY, FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: Because they never sold to it the American people.

Listen, Republicans have failed to realize a very basic premise here: you can`t win the hearts and minds of the American people by taking away their health care. And that doesn`t mean -- it`s true. And it doesn`t mean as Republicans we have to embrace Obamacare. Listen, I believe in center right principles.

But what it does mean is that every Republican plan is going to be measured against the breadth of coverage that Obamacare established. So what Republicans need to recognize is embrace the safety net that at times only government can provide for high risk patients and that means Medicaid, those who can`t afford it, Medicare, those with preexisting conditions. And if you do that, if you embrace the safety net for high risk patients and those who can`t afford it, you actually can restore affordability to the private sector market, and nobody loses coverage.

But any bill that is taking away health care coverage from anybody is going to lose. You`re not going to be able to sell it.

HAYES: Do you -- is that the fundamental, Angel? I know you guys have been doing a lot of organizing. It`s been really interesting to watch. You`ve been in -- there has been folks from Adapt, the disability rights group, who have camped out for hours, sit-ins and sleep-ins in Cory Gardner`s office from Colorado, indivisible folks who were outside Tom Cotton`s office. Is that, do you think, the central core of the issue here on a substantive grounds?

ANGEL PADILLA, INDIVISIBLE: No, I think that`s exactly right. I mean, at the end of the day, what we know for a fact is that millions of people are going to lose their health coverage. So, 22 million people, according to the CBO, are going to lose their health care. And Republicans, instead of owning up to that fact, are now trying the lie to their constituents, saying that this isn`t as bad as it sounds, you know, nothing is going to happen to Medicaid. They`re lying to their constituents. And they can`t hide the fact that millions of people are going to lose their health care.

HAYES: Angel, what is the plan? You know, The Indivisibles organize in a lot of ways of sort of getting constituents in front of either their elected representatives or staffers for those. What is the plan going into this recess?

PADILLA: So, the plan for Republicans was to avoid this situation, right? They`ve tried everything they could to get this vote before July 4th because they are terrified of their constituents. And they should be. They should be because they`re trying to rip health care away from millions of Americans.

And so now what is interesting about July 4th is that they can`t hide from their constituents because a lot of these members love going to these parades and like going to these festivals. And you know what they can expect on July 4th is constituents coming at them, asking them questions, questions that they don`t want to answer, because they don`t have an answer to those questions.

HAYES: David, the development today that struck me is really important and notable was I do not underestimate Mitch McConnell. And I watched this play out in the House where there was a first round and then they kind of played opossum and they were able to pass it ultimately.

But today there was a little bit, it felt to me, of a jail break. I mean, when you have Ben Sasse and you have Rand Paul basically saying let`s just repeal and not replace. You have got reporting from Axios that conservative groups aren`t happy with the Senate health care bill. The divide is growing. Did it feel to you today like the existing get a deal plan sort of fell apart?

JOLLY: It did. And actually, I think, Chris, it was your tweet right away that nailed it, which is it felt like Donald Trump dropped a bomb on the whole negotiation. Because if you go that route, nothing is going to pass.

Listen, something that Republicans need to realize, and most of them were elected during the time when Obamacare had very poor public opinions. That was the reality early on. Remember, the lie of the year and so forth.

Now it`s stabilized.

But the fact is if you extricate Obama`s name from this and just approach it as national health care policy, there are things that Republicans can do that say we do need to drive down costs. We do have markets across 50 states that are losing providers and let`s fix it.

But listen, they need to stop following this president, because he is not a policy leader, and they`re going to lose the majority on the Hill if they do it.

HAYES: To David`s point, though, I mean, it doesn`t strike me, Angel, that they`ve been following the president. They`ve been -- it`s Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who have crafted these bills. And Angel, it strikes me that the thing that has been most dangerous to them is the strategy of trying to do things fundamentally in secret that they know are unpopular and thinking there is some sort of end around, ultimately, public opinion.

PADILLA: That`s right. And the bottom line is there is no end around, right, because we know what this little bill would do. I mean, it`s incredible that, you know, we`re going into July and we`re still talking about this. And the only reason we got this far is because of all that constituent energy that was pushing against this bill.

But the bottom line is that back in January, we were talking about repeal and delay. And, you know what, Americans didn`t want it. They didn`t want repeal.

HAYES: Yeah, just to be clear, repealing without a replacement would be really, really chaos inducing probably for the markets.

PADILLA: Exactly.

And if Republicans are serious about doing this, about fixing and making our health care better, they could do something very easily. I mean, the CBO identified one easy thing that Republicans do and the president could do to make the system better, and that`s make sure that the CSR, the subsidies, are available. That`s causing a lot of instability in the markets, and that just indicates how they don`t care about making the system better. What they want to do is score some points.

HAYES: I should note, David, that to your point, there is actually even -- there`s parts of the actual bill itself that you could just take out, remove from everything else, that target, basically, ways to fund the exchanges to induce more competition and lower costs in them, which you could just take that out, rip that out of the bill, you could probably get 70 votes for it when they came back from recess.

We`ll see if they do that. Angel Padilla and David Jolly, thank you and have a great holiday.

JOLLY: Good to be with you.

HAYES: All right, that is All In for this evening. And once again it`s Rachel Maddow with her show, which starts now. Thank you for coming on. And have a great weekend.

END

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